


Manhattan on Trailer Trash Skylines

by Annie Christ (SmokedSalmon)



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Axel has really bad tattoos, Cheerleader, Fashion and things, M/M, Meth labs, Modern AU, Pianists, They talk a lot and make out, southern
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-28
Updated: 2014-08-10
Packaged: 2017-12-27 21:47:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/983985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SmokedSalmon/pseuds/Annie%20Christ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roxas is a retired high school cheerleader who only knows his way around both a trailer park and the small southern town Dusk Point. The last thing he ever expected was to fall for a man with meth teeth, grace the covers of foreign fashion magazines and find the answer to his and Axel's problems in a startling rendition of Rhapsody in Blue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

 

"How're you gonna fondle my balls and ask about my old man?"

Small Town, USA is the opaquest weaving on Earth's loom. In the land of birdhouses and yards only large enough to starve a cow within half a day, little goes unheard of. One could even theorize there are filing cabinets of confessional booth transcripts neatly tucked away for the Book Club's bi-weekly meetings, but in reality human beings innatelylove to gossip. If they say otherwise, then they're understandable liars attempting to burn the bridges between themselves and a potentially ugly image that could make or break a certain quality of life. People care about who had an abortion, where someone sets his genitals, how much that boob augmentation cost and who finagled the larger tax return because, when a community decides to _bond_ in a county that hasn't even acquired a Starbucks yet, there's a lot of time to care.

Because of this disregard for confidential information, there are rarely anonymous people be they known via infamy or not, but there  _are_  faceless enigmas who manage to go unseen for inappropriately long spans of time. Occasionally, these people become their own class of glorified legend. Usually, they're isolated white trash with a laundry list of indictments and a starring role on the police scanner.

"Touch me again and see what happens, you fucking queer!"

And then sometimes they're both.

Main Street's sidewalk was my flowering pot as I stood with a sweating cup of iced coffee in my left hand and posture that was homage to the amount of time I spent sprawled out on my grandparents' loveseat. The small of my back was rain on a windshield and the tank top I'd tugged on while walking off my slanted wrap around porch was sopping and sticking to sunburnt skin. During my three minute walk, dog shit had romanced the bottom of my Vans, and I'd started secreting Chinese restaurant dish water by the end of my neighborhood's three block stretch. Persevering in the name of a cream drink with a spritz of coffee that tasted like steeped cigarette ashes was demeaning. I acknowledged that every time my lips hit the straw, but it hadn't stopped me from emptying my wallet thrice a week since someone had decided enough was enough and opened a locally owned coffee shop. Minimum wage held dominion over my adolescent life and overpriced coffee was the only thing my disposable income covered. That and a thirty dollar a month subscription to cheap pornographic websites featuring hairy men with waxed to pink assholes.

I liked my coffee like my men; tasteless and disgusting.

"Why don't you put the cuffs on a little tighter? I like it when police men get rough."

A skull meeting a solid surface echoed in riposte.

The plastic cup I was clasping onto threatened to slip onto pavement, and I released a sharp grunt when I swapped hands to wipe the freed one on my grey-blue athletic shorts. My skin currently held dominion over the sun's oppressive rays as I cautiously raised my arm to discern the rate of my sweat glands' progressing rage. Deciding things could be worse, I reached into the plunging depths of my pocket for a self-condemnatory pack of Marlboros only to retract my tacky fingers and tilt my head back in defeat. The newest soft pack with its sweat tempered cigarettes had been left drowning somewhere in the sea of my cum stained bed's duvet. I now had nothing to do with my hands but smack my thumb and forefinger together and rub at the summer air's stickiness. It was seeping into my skin and resurfacing as toilet paper remnants.

Across the street sat a humming police car in front of the local courthouse and two moving silhouettes, but I was too immersed in the self-pity of having to walk four blocks back to my house to notice. I'd seen more than one angry person frisked in my lifetime, and there wasn't anything remarkable about it. My eyes slated to half-lidded, and I contemplated stepping back inside to postpone exposure to the summer air. That was until the shouting morphed into what sounded like someone screaming their Miranda Rights to the tune of the ABCs song. Halting in mid-pivot, I curved my attention to the scene I'd been ignoring.

The squad car's back passenger door was thrown open with a swirling blood smear painted across the tinted window. Alone on the footpath in a town that hadn't bothered to wake up yet, I was the sore thumb among unlit shop fronts. I took a sip and stared down at my cup when I realized I was already sucking in gulps of air. I'd had the coffee for five minutes and it was already the watery essence of what-had-been. After determinedly shaking the ice I returned to sucking at whatever excess liquid the melting ice left and waited for the perpetrator's unveiling. The car door was hiding the elusive man as the officer attempted to shove him inside, and from where I stood it resembled sodomy above arrest.

"I will fuck your mouth so hard!"

Police Officer had intentions of fighting the man to the death, and when his arms looped around the detainee's waist he arched back only to reveal the kicking and screaming culprit. To be exact, he only revealed half of him. Skin tight leopard pants on spidery legs bicycled toward the bloodied sky. The appendages were connected to a pair of scuffed white cowboy boots and lanky arms reached upward in a frantic doggy paddle. Concerned for my own welfare, I licked my lips and looked around to see if anyone else had arrived to witness what I was seeing. I was completely alone and the coffeehouse's Maroon 5 jazz cover was blocking out the screaming. I nervously hummed along.

One of the boots caught the top of the car with a jarring smack, and the long-limbed figure kicked off to send himself and the officer flying back onto asphalt. A defining thud came afterward and it was then I managed a lightning glimpse of geranium hair with dirty roots. The cuffed entity rolled off the officer and leapt to his feet without the use of his hands, stumbled to gain his equilibrium then spat beside the law man's head.

Olive-toned features were caked in blood draining from his nose while his alien cheekbones were high and body emaciated. Residual muscle mass created defined terrain along his thin biceps yet the muscle tee he wore had arm holes large enough to reveal an undeniable beer gut accentuated by an untamed trail of dark hair and unidentifiable ink. He was too pale for his skin type; there were reddened splotches along his arms that looked like infected bug bites and his pants were stained by grease. In short, he was the most disgusting human being I had ever laid eyes on. Earth had birthed him onto the planet with thin lips and catty eyes meant to stir the pot for Mother Nature and it was borderline awe-inspiring. He didn't have to stand beside me for me to know he smelled like ass.

The man glanced around, fleetingly looked me over with illuminated eyes and then, with his arms still locked behind him, began running down the sidewalk in the opposite direction of the police station. While my lips parted into an uncertain 'O,' I paid close attention to the way he stumbled over feet too small for his figure. He paused at the end of the block, looked left and then right only to turn back around and jet toward the west end. When he shot past me the second time, I noted how his ribs showed like tumbleweed branches. His shoulders were thorns hiked upward and he continued almost tripping until steadying himself by the Grace of God.

Like a cloud of desert dust he disappeared down a backstreet. Only then did the police officer struggle to his feet and jog his fat ass toward me. It hadn't occurred to me being the sole witness to his occupational failure would make me a part of the problem, and I decided I was going to temporarily hate myself for not leaving sooner. What I'd witnessed wasn't something I wanted to be associated with beyond distant judging. For all I knew the redheaded man was an escapee from the local mental ward, and I didn't know anyone with the motivation to deal with that. Just thinking about it exhausted me.

The officer wheezed. "Did you see which way that little piece of shit went?"

'Little' wasn't what I would've used, but my better judgment told me not to say so.

I pointed east. "He went that way."

* * *

Hayner blasted his stereo on the kind of decibel frequency meant for Madison Square Garden. When we sat in his rusted Sedan that was reverence to a fast food dumpster I always knew what to expect. Before either of us could buckle our seatbelts he dove straight for the volume knob and cranked it with a single rotation of his wrist. I could never decide if the bass was more like a devastating earthquake or deep tissue massage minus the tranquility and plus the Wu-Tang Clan. There was nothing relaxing about Hayner's enthusiasm for hip-hop with his pride when he nailed complex verses. Hayner went hard, and he did so with gesticulations and facial spasms as unnatural as they were embarrassing. His life was a music video, and I was the girl in the background wearing painted on hot pants and hoop earrings big enough to give birth through.

With summer greened oaks rolling past our windows, I chewed on a piece of spearmint gum and flipped a page in the copy of GQ I'd plucked off a stand while buying chips from 7-Eleven. Between my numbing thighs was a compressed fountain drink that solidified chewing gum and on my face sat knockoff wraparound sunglasses. Each pair of shoes on the glossed pages was plump eggplants laced tight in corsets, and I could've sworn blue socks and black shoes was an unforgivable sin. Then again, it was always nice to reaffirm I was tasteless swine. The thought of owning expensive things was condescending, but the models made me want to yank it for days. Because of this I didn't mind dipping into my limited funds for the monthly issue even if I was typically left more dumbfounded than informed once post-coital.

We'd been sitting in five 'o clock traffic with the windows rolled down for two minutes before Hayner spoke. " _Jesus Christ_ , it's hot. I'm one more heat stroke from stripping."

I flipped a page and paused. "Please don't."

My shoulder shifted back because it'd been sitting in the sun long enough to begin stinging and I anticipated my eventual half-baked bicep. Arching my spine toward the dash until it crackled like rice cereal, I attempted to read another page but was too restless for anything alphabetic. Hayner pressed his palm against the horn and I glanced up at the car in front of us.

"That's it!" Hayner let go of the wheel, put the car in neutral, and took off his shirt. "We're getting naked!"

Dusk Point had been reduced to a bubbling cauldron of melted hell. Everywhere I looked the world was wriggling toward the sky and distorting the cubicle of a town I'd been born into and would prematurely die in if the heat didn't forgo its vice grip on the city's balls. While Hayner decided to confirm the town's rumors about us sucking each other's dicks, I seared a bumper sticker's message onto my brain. Essentially, fetuses made for good cartoons and the word 'abortion' should never be splayed onto a car in the kind of font one might see on a kindergarten classroom's announcement board.  _Good morning, children. Who can recite the dilation and curettage procedure from memory? The first person to get it right wins a Jolly Rancher and coupon to Pizza Hut._

"Do you  _have_  to take your pants off?"

Hayner's attempt to shuck his pants in the front seat looked like an interpretive dancer trying to convey the struggles of the United States' crashing economy. "Yes, Roxas, I  _have_  to take my pants off. The sweat from my junk is gluing my thigh to my pant leg. It's melding together. A chemical change  _is_  happening right now as we speak."

"You didn't have to tell me that."

A denim bomb hit my face and my head made nice with the door. "But I  _did_ …"

Everyone had laughed during Hayner's senior presentation about his future career as a music video director. Maybe it was because there weren't many people who aspired to leave small towns like Dusk Point, but the bonus of Hayner's life path was that it had been interesting and informed. After sitting through approximately nineteen presentations about how important it was for so-and-so to become a nurse practitioner he saved the day with a five year plan that meant something to me. Not that it was condemnable to want a simple life as the local bedpan changer, but that kind of aspiration made for good nap material three weeks pre-graduation. By the end of the week I knew more about the salary and prerequisites for a nurse than my own contrite bullshit. I didn't actually want to be an astrologist, but when someone is expected to reach into the trenches of his ass and figure out his life in a week anything sounds good on paper.

After listening to Hayner's struggles and bull grunting, I tossed my magazine onto the backseat containing turntables and tugged my shirt over my head. Traffic didn't happen where we lived, and to quench curiosity, I leaned out the window, grasped onto the roof and tugged myself out until I was balanced on the window liner. Over the tops of the cars I could see a stream of vehicles crossing the intersection, and it wasn't until the white hearse trailed past did it dawn on me there was a funeral procession eating up the one of four roads that made up Dusk Point. It was no wonder we'd been sitting there so long.

Hayner was still bitching. "We're like heated glass. If someone set us on a cool surface we'd combust."

"It's a funeral."

That made him pause. "Who died?"

My back began to itch from the heat, but I continued watching in my perched position. "No one we know. Guess it doesn't matter, but you should feel like a shit for bitching so much."

"Actually, no, because it's still hot as a taint up in here."

When the steady trickling of traffic returned and Hayner pulled the car out of neutral I was wondering about the corpse. A dead body had been close yet completely unseen and to witness the transportation of it seemed intrusive. Not that it bothered me. A dead body is a dead body is a dead body, and the fear of a shell had been lost on me since I'd seen my great aunt's bloated corpse at ten years old. Her lipstick had been missing, her hair parted wrong and they'd Crisco-ed her into a lime chiffon dress better left to prom resale than the underworld. Back then I wondered how they got her in the dress. The mental image of that parodic struggle was too real.

I'd thoughtlessly reached forward for the tuner on the radio because I'd drained my patience for Hayner's preferred genre. I liked it, but not when he was one of those people who found a song and proceeded to play it to the point of a negative T-cell count. There were some songs we groaned at solely because he had ruined them for the both of us, and as Fleetwood Mac poured through static and a neighboring station's transmission I figured it was better than the repetitive mentioning of some woman's ass big enough to fill a hot air balloon.

"Fleetwood Mac is that group you stop your life for."

"I don't know, Roxas. Can you handle the changing seasons of your life?"

"Mirror in the sky what is love, Hayner."

Before he could retort conversationally the chorus came on and we were distracted by Stevie Nicks for the rest of the drive back to my grandparents' house. I was the vagabond grandchild who technically wasn't even theirs, but they'd continued acknowledging me even after the paternity test said not to. The Dungeons and Dragons basement dweller with a penchant for witchcraft and Star Wars hadn't been my father. Instead, my mom had reproduced with a man three states north during one of her runaways. She'd been sixteen and the mysterious trucker had strung her along long enough to spread her legs and break a condom. When I'd asked why she'd slept with him all she could tell me was he'd danced like no one she'd ever seen before. I hadn't bothered asking anything else after that.

Of course, I didn't know I wasn't biologically Dungeons and Dragons' son until I was eight years old, when his then wife insisted on a paternity test. I wasn't sure what the swabbing had meant until an episode of Maury came on after Saturday morning cartoons two years post-testing. Really, it wasn't a surprise since I'd already been informed I wasn't biologically equipped to be a part of the organic family unit. After the results came back, aforementioned wife had been taking a gratuitous shit on the toilet when she'd called me into the bathroom. At first, I'd thought she was going to ask me to grab a roll of toilet paper from the hall closet. Turned out all she wanted was to let me know my dad wasn't my dad and half the family I loved wasn't my family. Three years later she got breast cancer and they cut off her tits, but I let bygones be bygones. Parents are overrated anyway.

"We're hanging out later," Hayner said as I reached into the backseat to grab my magazine and shirt. He'd parked outside my house and Grandma was peering at us through the blinds. I waved at her. "Are  _you_  hanging out later? I mean, you don't have to, which is my way of saying I'll be back here in five hours."

I took another swig from my diluted soda. "I'll think about it."

"Bless your McDonalds compromised heart. You think you have a choice."

"What're we even doing? Because I'm pretty sick of back roading."

Yes, back roading. But if you're Hayner and everyone else on the spectrum of know-how, then it's called  _hitting a BR_. This group anointed verb is a prime example of the absolute nothingness that encompasses Dusk Point. Someone woke up one morning and decided, instead of smoking kush and sitting on a back porch, they could do the exact same thing while wasting gas money and getting lost in the deliverance that is Dusk Point's wilderness. Those who honestly believe it's impossible to get lost in the United States need to rethink the vastness that can encompass a town with the approximate population of 9,000. Back roading is a nice experience for someone with a sense of adventure, but truth be told nothing freaks me out more than being outside while high. Getting lost with people who only pretend they know where they're going is only an added bonus.

"No BR tonight." He turned his iPod back on now that I was no longer there to dictate his music. "Olette and Pence are coming with me to Xigbar's."

"You mean Xigbar's actual house?" I knew I was about to be insulting, but I couldn't help it. "So-how'd you manage that?"

"Damn, Roxas, be a little subtler about letting me know where I sit in this aristocracy.  _Dick_ …" He knew why I was surprised, though. "I've been there a couple times to buy shake from him. I ran over his fence and left an impression, so he'll text me sometimes. We're cool."

It was obvious who was initiating those text messages. "Sorry you're not the Marquees of Cool. Isn't his house in the middle of God Only Knows Where?"

His next words were spoken philosophically as he shifted back into drive. "In this world we do what we must to get the things we need."

"Uh-huh."

Stepping out of the car and shutting the door behind me without saying goodbye, I strode inside the A-framed cottage with its cobblestone siding and collection of lawn ornaments that were actually just decorated rocks. Words like  _prudence_ ,  _kindness_  and  _thankfulness_  were engraved in the stones that sat in my grandma's modest front garden. I didn't know what purpose they were supposed to serve. They were hidden by flowers and the occasional crab grass, so it wasn't like I stepped outside everyday with the stark grandma reminder not to be a raging asshole on the brink of absolute prolapse. Then again, grandmas did weird things. Another example being my grandma's collection of shoe trinkets that lined the den no one was supposed to sit in. Rooms without purpose was another thing that mystified me down to the last stitch on their golden silk throw pillows.

"Well, hey there, honey." As soon as I stepped into the off-limits den that was a direct extension to the kitchen I was engulfed in a grandma hug. I was a twenty year old living with his grandparents and I still drifted into her affection as if being returned to the womb. After a moment of letting her wordlessly hug me for too long, I hugged back, which was the cue to let me go. "Did you have a fun time with Hayner?"

I'm twenty years old. I promise. "Yeah, but we got caught up in a funeral procession."

She'd turned to go back to the stove only to stop. "You drove  _with_  the procession?"

"No," but that probably would've been fifty percent funnier. "We had to wait for it to pass. It was going through that intersection in front of the donut shop."

"Which donut shop? The new one or the old one?"

"I thought they were the same age."

Her hand reached for the pepper beside the stove. "No, one's newer than the other."

"New by whose standards? They've both been here since I was born."

"No," she paused to think and then clicked her tongue. "No, they haven't."

My grandma loves me more than she should. During the 60s, she was a stone cold fox with platinum blond hair and a rocking body. While working through her first marriage she chomped gum and sewed jackets in a now-closed-down factory eight blocks north. After finally getting a divorce from her first husband and becoming the stepmother to Dungeons and Dragons, she settled down with my grandpa, his other kids and a few of her own. From there, she morphed into the family's figurehead for love and support. No matter how you turned it she would've never been my biological grandmother, but that was a nonissue for the both of us.

"I'm going out later." I was doing that thing where someone stands in the entranceway of a room anticipating the cue to leave. I rolled onto the tips of my toes and fell back onto my heels. "If you hear me leave and the front door opens later tonight, then it's me. You're not being robbed or anything."

"Are you eating dinner with us?" She flipped on the oven's light to display a casserole dish. "It should be done in about an hour and a half."

"I'll be home." My index finger pointed up as I began walking backward toward the stairs parallel to the front door. "I'm going to take a nap. Yell for me when it's done."

"Well,  _okay_." She extended the last word. "I love you, honey."

My grandma loved me so much it made me hate myself. "I love you too."

I ran up the carpeted stairs, slipped and rug burned my shin only to finish crawling up the stairs toward my bedroom.

When I was younger and only visited on weekends, my room had been dolphin themed for the sake of my girl cousins who visited. Once dolphins had stopped being something my grandma could stand it converted to Scooby-Doo because I was going through a phase where Scooby and the Gang were the reason I breathed. Scooby lasted until the end of middle school and then there was the Dark Age when Grandma attempted to turn it into a respectable guest room with grandma furniture. Junior year of high school happened and I moved in on them. I immediately hiked my leg on the place and it turned into my junk haven with galaxy painted walls and cool colored stained glass lamps.

I yanked on a sweatshirt, took off my pants and floated toward the bed with my toenails dragging the floor. This was how I handled my days off. I slept like someone had beaten my face in for sleeping with his wife. It wasn't as if I had anything better to do, anyway. No matter my mood, I was the vigilante death sentence the second I collapsed onto my bed. It only ever took me three minutes to bleed into the mattress.

* * *

"Supper time!"

When my eyes opened I snorted with an intake of breath. I didn't know where I was. The sun had set and my bedroom was draped in its usual low lit haze of turquoise and cobalt, but I was still disoriented. For a second I could've sworn someone had thrown me into a bed of sea weed twenty feet beneath the ocean's surface. Drool crusted the corners of my mouth when I pushed myself up and the hood from my sweatshirt had decided to serve its purpose while I slept. It fell off my head as I stared out the window directly beside my bed. The neighborhood had quieted, trees were still, and all I could focus on was the fact that there was food downstairs. I also really wanted to rub one out. I didn't have time for the latter idea, though. The older I got the more life became a tossup between sustenance and sex.

Downstairs I trudged with crust in my eyes. Grandma used to call it stardust, but it was annoying eye snot that sometimes hurt to pick out if I aimed my nails wrong. One of my aunts stood in the kitchen with her toddler balanced on her hip and a blanket in hand. She was loudly discussing her workday with Grandma and only smiled at me as I robotically made a beeline for the stack of paper plates on the countertop. The spread was typical grandma food, and it was by an act of God I hadn't packed on twenty pounds since living with her. I wasn't particularly vain or body conscious, but a high metabolism was one of my finer assets thanks to prior athleticism.

My seat at the table was empty except for a glass of crushed ice and unopened can of diet Mountain Dew. Holding my plate, I stared at it for a long time and furrowed my brow before glancing over at Grandma who was busy informing my aunt there was no time like the present to rework her life if her job was just that painful. I opened my mouth and wanted to say something but instead I stared at the glass for another twenty seconds too long. She did these things all the time, but she never let me stop her. My laundry was always done for me, my bedroom would be a wreck when I went to work and I'd come home to a clean floor, and she always made sure there was a fridge packed with my favorite foods. I didn't know what to do when these things happened, and when I stuttered over attempting to sincerely thank her I coined myself as World's Biggest Asshole. Because of her kindness I was constantly aware of how she could kick me out at any minute.

"So, where's Grandpa?" I asked while setting down my food and continuing to stare at the glass with a concerned frown. "It's already dark. Won't he crash or something driving this late?"

"Roxas, don't say things like that. He's working late. Another game…"

My grandpa was a professional photographer. "Oh, sorry."

Dinner ended with a clean plate and me eavesdropping on family drama I didn't have energy to comment on. The cousins were late on their mortgages, someone was fucking my stepsister in the back of a Honda Civic, and my uncle was robbing my great evangelical grandma blind. The ice in the bottom of my glass turned into a source of amusement as I shook, tipped, ended up with a face full and proceeded to open my mouth before crunching down. For years my grandma tried to tell me the cause of compulsive ice chewing was anemia, but after getting checked it turned out I was just obnoxious. Self-implemented brain freeze came to a halt when the phone in my hoodie's pocket buzzed. Hayner sent a text to make sure I wasn't backing out on him, and I wasn't, but I wanted to. No one at Xigbar's was a friend of mine and getting to know people was its own kind of punishment.

At the last minute I showered and did myself the disservice of pulling on a beanie even though it was hotter than a two dollar pistol. Why was I wearing a hat in the middle of a heat wave? Because the top of my hair flipped upward in a stream of blond duck asses. I wasn't sure what celestial entity had thought it was hilarious to design my cowlick, but I hadn't laughed once during the hours I'd spent before school attempting to tame the beast. If my hair had to be defined as a person, then it was Courtney Love post-Kurt Cobain. It was mourning through substance abuse, misunderstood and barely salvaging an already non-existent career.

Hayner showed up while I was in the middle of picking at my happy trail with a set of tweezers. It wasn't because I needed to shave. It was because I  _could_. Testing the limitations of my body hair's elasticity had garnered appeal for no reason other than boredom induced curiosity. Because I was so concentrated on my follicles my Eddie Money ringtone startled me into jabbing myself. I shuddered as skin broke and blood pooled to the surface of my navel.

"Son of a bitch!" I tossed the metal instrument aside and grabbed my phone to check and make sure it was in fact Hayner. Of course it was. "I'm actually fucking stupid…"

Without saying goodbye to anyone I bounded down the stairs while shoving my wallet into my back pocket and out the front door I went in a single stream of motion. There I was greeted by both humidity and the sight of Olette wildly gesturing along with Hayner to whatever was playing on the iPod. Pence was determinedly staring at his Gameboy in the backseat and somehow managing to tune them out, but I paused on my sidewalk watching. Olette and Hayner were synchronized and I had competition for the lead spot in Hayner's first music video. Sometimes I didn't know if Hayner wanted to make videos or be in them, but the first sounded significantly less impossible.

Hayner rolled down his window and started to beat on the steering wheel while Olette swiped her hands over one another in time with what I then could tell was Nicki Minaj. It was a change from the usual EPMD, and I began copying Olette's motions while walking toward the car until all three of us were bobbing in time with a song about boys who spent all their money on love. Pence was nodding his head along to the beat when I opened the door to take my seat beside him. None of us said anything until we were at the first stop sign and the song was over.

I leaned forward. "Isn't Xigbar like old as hell?"

Hayner wasn't about to dispute that. "When you stay around here you're young forever."

The matriarch of our group pursed her lips and proceeded to pull her hair back into a ponytail. "I don't think that's how it works."

We were high school friends who hadn't left Dusk Point. The reason for staying was a tug of war between finances and indecisiveness. Olette was finishing her general education with Hayner so that they could transfer to their dream schools with good academic standing. Pence had decided to take a few years off to make sure he was investing his student loans wisely.  _Me_? I was silently floundering with a new plan every two months. I'd gone from high school cheerleader co-captain alongside Olette with a full academic scholarship to sweaty palms in front of a school counselor. It took until applicant deadlines had passed for me to realize I'd never considered planning for the future. This induced my first experience with anxiety, and I hadn't rose above it to date.

"Hanging out with the old dudes," Pence murmured as his fingers continued tapping away at his game. "All hail the suppository party."

"I don't know, Pence," I offered while lifting my shirt and examining my stomach with my phone's light. A scab had already formed. "It sounds like our kind of all you can eat 3 PM buffet."

Xigbar lived on the county line for a reason. We were in what archeologists consider to be a dry county, which is apparently a prehistoric notion to the rest of the world. There were no bars, convenient liquor stores on every corner or even an aisle in the local grocery store to appease the rampant alcoholism. The county over was Catholic-wetted with not just one but two brick-boxed liquor stores on the line. Not only was it the closest place we could get booze, but it was also the cause of our high number of annual drunk driving collisions. My senior year I had gone to the funeral of a girl and her boyfriend because they'd been eradicated by a man driving home completely wasted. Graduation hadn't been the prettiest ceremony, for sure. Things like that swept Dusk Point off its feet and onto its ass more than the downturn of factory employment.

But Xigbar's house was nestled out of the way within a cluster of trees. This made the place the prime spot for wrongdoing. Because he owned it that gave people who filtered in and out even more freedom. His house was the place everyone knew and heard about, but there were maybe twelve people who spent time there. This was why it was such a big deal for Hayner to gain access to the place. Socially it was in the grotto, but people still admired the tightknit friend group because they were  _fun_. In their own Benchmark and Marlboro Red 100s way they were the pinnacle of what people wanted to be. When I was in high school I'd heard names. Xigbar was a legend in the Titan sort of way along with Xemnas and Saix, but then there were people like Larxene and Marluxia. I'd seen them before, but they were all fleeting encounters, of course. They hadn't had time for a regularly drug tested high schooler with theoretical pompoms.

By the time we made it out of the breakneck back roads alive and pulled up to Xigbar's crowded driveway I was car sick. Pence laughed at me when I scrambled for the handle and sucked in breaths of dense fresh air. Complete darkness had set on our county, my organs were pleading for an exit through my throat, and I was panting like I was practicing Lamaze technique.

"Yo—" Hayner was giving me a mildly embarrassed stare. "Are you okay?"

" _Don't_ look at me."

Hayner led us to the front door as if he owned the place. The place being a typical farmhouse in the middle of a typical nowhere with the most typical uninspiring porch swing that swayed with the typical feeble summer breeze. From behind the screen door Santana's  _Smooth_  poured and someone was loudly singing along with the guitar while a whiskey fried voice lazily sputtered through lyrics.

Stepping inside led us into a living room empty of people but open concept enough to get a good view of what we were getting into. Through the forest of recliners, ashed on coffee table and flatscreen with its Xbox Live home screen stagnant I could see the kitchen with a homemade yet-to-be stained dining table and a crowd of loudly laughing people surrounding it. Xigbar was gesturing at Larxene as she gave him an uninspired stare and she was the first to notice us. The blonde with her tiny stature and intimidating red lipstick snapped at Xigbar and pointed at the four of us. Without knowing what to say I was glancing at Hayner because he knew them. He'd been invited.  _He_ was responsible for whatever happened to us beyond that point.

"Look at what the short bus dropped off! I stay the same age and you kids just keep getting younger." Xigbar was older than I remembered with his cigarillo in hand, beer in the other and shit eating grin. He stuck the cigar into corner of his mouth and reached out to shake our hands. The formality was uncustomary, but he waited on our names without giving his own. Of course we knew who he was.

My handshake was firm because I'd heard that's how you were supposed to shake the President's hand. I was an honest to God fucking idiot for putting him on that pedestal. "It's Roxas."

"Roxas, huh—well, hell. I've seen you before. You know how I know your friend, right? He backed into my fence. Drives by here and gets lost almost every time, too. Always has to call."

I turned to Hayner who was lighting up and ignoring that. "Amazing, Hayner—actually inspiring."

"Don't grind on him, though. He's cool. I like him."

Someone slammed their hand onto the table and loudly groaned in defeat. Xigbar beckoned for us to follow him and snapped his eye patch into place. I'd never heard the story behind how he lost his eye because it changed once a week and always involved a feral animal.

The group around the table was playing poker and the collective male figures were shirtless and concentrated on their hands. The only girl in the realm aka Xigbar's queen, who wasn't above river dancing on my face for sneezing the wrong way, paced in her rebel flag bikini top and high-waisted shorts. She was mocking everyone's hand with ugly jeers, but I could see exactly what she was doing. Larxene was purposely riling up players and making the entire group doubt and fear each other. From where I stood I could see Marluxia's worthless hand and she gasped as if it were the Sistine Chapel.

When the B-52s'  _Love Shack_  rolled from the iPod dock there was a collective groan and Larxene yelled. "Who the hell's iPod is this? Tell me now so I can beat you into a hysterectomy!"

At the head of the table sat the last person on earth I expected to recognize. In his hands were cards he was glowering at, on his bony wrists were individual handcuffs that sat on his pale skin like bangles, and when his gaze flickered up, he brought back his broad shoulders as if proudly taking the blame for being the last person on earth Larxene saw fit to exist. He broke face and cackled at her before reaching upward toward the ceiling with a grunting stretch. Across his hairy abdomen in exact mirroring of Tupac's 'Thug Life' tattoo sat the two words 'Mama Tried.' The expansion of his chest was clean shaven and dotted in freckles but there were none to be seen on his face. He'd grown past that point of juvenile dusting and exchanged it for impressive armpit hair and a five o'clock shadow.

He drummed his fingers along the edge of the table. "Open your mouth a little wider, Larxene. A cock might fall out."

"You're a wordsmith, Axel. A real Pulitzer Prize winner. I can't wait for that ceremony to finally compensate for the hefty package you're lacking." Larxene sat on his lap and the way he threw back his hands indicated it was the last thing he'd expected or wanted. He nearly lost his cards. "It'll be a real void filler. Unlike you..."

"I couldn't have said it better. Your birth canal is the wind tunnel people indoor skydive in. A real void, baby. I'm modest enough to admit I can't fill it, but scientists say its impossible to survive a black hole, anyway. There's no real loss on my end."

"People like you are the reason the police keep accidentally forgetting to check sinkholes for bodies."

"You know—that is  _really_ cold coming from someone who used to tell me they love me."

"You know—it is  _really_  sad when people your age reference back to high school."

Axel was the same person who'd escaped arrest. Realizing I hadn't told my friends about what I'd seen meant I couldn't tug Hayner to the side and explain why exactly I was one slip of self-control from yelling about how I knew who he was. That was the thing, though. I didn't know who Axel was beyond his name. More than once I'd heard about the things he was capable of, but I'd been conditioned by my grandma to take it all with a grain of salt. We never knew the people we talked about the most.

When Axel folded with a groan of defeat, Xigbar wildly laughed at him and tossed an unopened beer at his chest that Larxene ducked to dodge. The thunk and his wheeze followed, but Axel gave him a suggestive look that was immediately turned down by a wicked stare of disgust. Only when Axel stood up to get a beer that wasn't a ticking time bomb did I realize he was wearing the same pants and boots from before. His entire body was an idol for the Saint of Grime.

Marluxia sat with shoulder length pastel pink hair faded into silvery patches, and from the side of the table he gave off a delayed laugh. His attire made it look as if he'd been ripped directly from  _Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas_  with the sunglasses and hat to bring it home. He wrinkled his nose and spoke with an uncertain tone. "Was that a queef joke?"

Axel paused, thought about it, and his laughter crackled. "Now it is."

Xigbar left us to fend for ourselves without bothering to introduce us. I rolled my lips together and stood to the side. How this was supposed to be a party worth anyone's time was a little beyond me. There was only beer and incessant nagging from the group of older regulars and me wondering why I hadn't drove myself. Then again, there wasn't much integrity in painting the town red in my grandma's van. Looking less like an asshole didn't make up for the fact I was trapped in a house with people I didn't know. Not only that, but I had intentions of drinking once someone handed over a beer. Predictably, Olette wouldn't hold out and live up to her DD anointment and we'd be stuck at Xigbar's until someone sobered up enough to get behind the wheel. It was always either Pence or me.

The redhead raised up his beer and wore a severe stare. "Who's sober here?"

A lengthy silence loomed over us. Technically, all of my friends and I were, but none of us were about to speak up. It was then I noticed exactly how tall Axel was. He stood at the exact same height as the refrigerator he'd pulled his beer from and I had always thought no one could out height Xigbar, but there they stood at about equal stances. I couldn't have reached his shoulders, and I contemplated staring at my open palms and asking a well-earned inquiry. How man was I? Granted I was built like an Olympic gymnast, so there wasn't much concern warranted.

Xigbar volunteered Hayner who not-so-sneakily planted a hand on my arm as if silently letting me know I  _was_  going with him. "Kid over there is. All of them are."

"You two!" Axel grabbed his hideously orange hoodie off the back of a chair and yanked it on. He zipped it half-way over his bare chest and proceeded to tug the lengthy red hair out from beneath the hood. "Touchy feely, over there! We're out of beer! Let's go!"

For someone who looked like he hadn't seen five dollars in ten years, it came as a shock when he yanked out an iPhone, checked his bank account and padded out the front door through a cloud of moths that were attempting to make nice with the porch light.

Hayner dragged me toward the door. "Come on."

I opened my mouth in protest. "But I have to protect Pence."

"Olette is more than capable, you wiener."

"Says the biggest wiener I have ever had the misfortune of meeting."

We stepped outside. Axel was standing there with his face leaned over his phone. "So, like, I didn't catch your names, kiddos."

I raised my hand like a boy scout. "Roxas."

Hayner mimicked me. "Hayner."

Axel humored us both and did the same with a casual smile over his shoulder. "Axel."

 


	2. Chapter Two

Don't get me wrong. I like people in theory, but I'm not interested in the idea of having someone project a relationship onto me. This was why—as I sat in Hayner's front seat with my retinas fusing with the back road's faded dashes—there wasn't effort on my part to partake in the conversation Hayner was suffering through. Suffering is a nice way of putting it. Axel wasn't half as talkative as I'd anticipated him to be and Hayner was a huge lamer like me. There was no refuting the fact we were the bottom of the bucket sludge that'd been left behind in Dusk Point for the murder of crows to pick over. The difference between us and Axel and Company was how we didn't attempt to utilize our boredom with witty banter meant for some kind of self-aggrandizing foundation of coolness. We festered in our stagnant state and wondered when things would happen. Because we didn't embrace our current position in the world, we weren't charismatically abrasive. It was to a social fault. Suddenly smoking was vital. I couldn't deal with the stillness. I was dissolving in unspoken humiliation, but my pack of cigarettes wasn't on my person. This kept happening.

"Hayner," I said his name with the kind of mock authority that could've flipped the car. "What're you smoking right now?"

To me, my voice was too loud, but apparently it wasn't because the only look Hayner gave me was a side-glance of relief followed by an offer. "Menthol."

"Give me one."

While Hayner fished around in his back pocket, I waited for us to nose dive into a ditch. It took cigarettes killing to an unconventional level and made for a tasteless local headline that _would_ be utilized if the opportunity arose. The exchange happened quickly only for me to realize the lighter wasn't inside his pack. I blankly stared for a handful of seconds, inhaled through my teeth and then opened the glove compartment, knowing nothing would be there. The car was pitch black, much like my hope for a light, but a sharp tap on my shoulder redirected my frustration. I jerked back like dummy in a car crash commercial and glanced over my shoulder where the longest fingers I'd ever seen presented a hopefully ironic lighter with a turkey dinner printed on its sides.

"I've got you covered."

I plucked it from Axel's fingertips and lit up as quickly as possible. "Thanks..."

Axel wasn't about to let his trip to the liquor store be one for the books. When I turned to hand back the lighter, he caught eye contact and I knew there was no going back. He'd landed the open-opportunity for conversation. I was stuck. My tongue turned into a stunned mold. Brain cells smeared across a piece of toast like raspberry jam and visions of road-killed opossum bloating and becoming Maggot City blocked me from creating a streamline of thinking. He was going to have to say something first. I was prepared to stand behind the long drawn out silence until someone in the car fizzled out like Pop Rocks in a soda can. Snap, crackle and die from a death of inferiority-induced silence that held no realistic source other than me being an actual asshole.

"How old are you two?"

Hayner beat me to it. "Eighteen plus two."

I kept myself turned in the seat so that someone was facing Axel and he remained in the triangle of conversation. "I'm twenty, too."

"Do you mean you're also twenty or twenty-two?"

"Also..." I inhaled, reached behind myself to flick ashes into the whipping air and returned my focus to him. "How old are you?"

It was weird because I thought I already knew. Somehow or another I _thought_ I knew he was twenty-five years old and counting, but I didn't want to come across as someone who'd yanked it to every picture on his social networking resume. It was important to make sure he didn't feel too self-important. I couldn't handle the idea of feeding into that with anyone. Even though, if someone had fed into it with me, I'd have been his or her best friend. In fact, in high school, that'd been my life.

"We don't need to talk about my age." He leaned back in his seat with a flat expression. "It's not important."

"Could I round it up to thirty?"

"Oh, most definitely." Maybe he was older than I thought.

"Twenty-five plus one?"

"No dice, son." Axel leaned forward again, displaying Chiclet teeth framed in mold. "Why does it matter to you?"

"I'm just trying to keep it casual here. You're the one making it weird."

" _I'm_ making it _weird_?"

Hayner started mouthing along to the song playing from his iPod. Axel and I paused to watch him for longer than either of us probably anticipated. It took will power to tear my eyes away, and Axel's smile only stretched the longer Hayner kept his rhythm. His punctuality with rhyme and verse was as solid as a lake frozen over in Interlochen, Michigan. It helped he was smooth. Otherwise, he would've just been painfully white.

"But yeah," I continued. "You were making it weird."

Axel relented for my sake... or his. I wasn't too sure. "I'm twenty-seven."

"Could be worse."

"Come back to me when you're twenty-seven. See if that optimism's still there."

"It will be. Because I won't be thirty-four. Unlike someone."

" _Ouch_ —" He suddenly dragged his tongue along his cuffed wrist with closed eyes and a furrowed brow. His wrist and lidded expression froze as he spoke with his lips hovering an inch from his wrist. The only difference was how his mouth twisted to the side in a mocking smirk. _"_ —let me lick that wicked wound you inflicted on my ego, Roxas."

My name hissed from the back of his throat like an insult, but I'd seen more maliciousness from a marshmallow. If I'd popped him into a microwave, he would've expanded, expanded and expanded only to deflate into a pile of sugary shit the moment I beat the timer and opened the door. He wasn't too impressive for someone who was supposedly a part of the cream of the crop. I mean, he was impressive, but I guess it was more along the lines of impressively ridiculous. I could float with that for the time being. It wasn't like the liquor store was all that far off, anyway. We weren't bound together for a six-hour drive through the flatlands of Indiana with only sweat pants and Cracker Barrels to confirm the human race existed.

We pulled up to the store. Axel asked if either of us wanted anything, and Hayner was the only one who reached for his wallet. Whatever Hayner was buying I'd sip on. Turns out sipping on a thirty pack of Budweiser was my only option. I patiently waited for Axel to finagle his way out of the car before I spoke up. I even waited for him to walk inside the building just in case since my luck wasn't profound. If God saw a chance, then he'd make sure Axel heard me talk about him.

"He's weird."

Hayner nodded. "I don't think there's ever been a more fitting time to use the word."

"Then again, I masturbate in my grandma's house. Who am I to judge?"

"Spoken like the true messiah."

Axel returned with Hayner's beer, his own case of beer and a brown bag of what looked to be the outline of a whiskey bottle. Then again, what did I know about liquor beyond beer and cheap vodka? If someone asked me to walk into a liquor store and buy something fitted for a certain occasion, I'd end up buying Watermelon Burnett's. It wasn't as if Grandma had sat me down and taught me the know-how on boozing. We didn't tip back dirty martinis together and gossip about that day's rerun of the Golden Girls while scanning the Mixologists' Bible. I was a green bean in need of jumping twenty different hurdles into adulthood. Being an alcoholic was one of many eventual benchmarks in Dusk Point.

"Okay," Axel said as he entered the backseat with an ungraceful flop. "Hayner, right? Don't slam me here, but I used one of your dimes so that poor bastard back there wouldn't have to break a twenty. Actually, I didn't want to carry the change. I selfishly used one of your dimes for my own convenience. I'm not sorry. I don't care about that clerk."

"You could've just never told me. I wouldn't have noticed."

"But that wouldn't have been right. I _had_ to tell you."

"Incredible," I mumbled to myself.

Now, I don't know about the rest of the world, but knowing someone is eavesdropping on my casual conversation that isn't too casual is uncomfortable. Half the time, it feels like I'm sitting on the couch giving commentary for the low budget straight-to-video movie that's my life while trying to be hilarious when I'm not funny. It's not my fault Hayner and I can't sit in a car without having some kind of Disney movie moment where our thought processes transcend time and space as if an oracle plopped onto our crotches and gifted us with eternal insight.

"Did you know Taco Bell's meat is like 80% corn?"

"That explains so much."

Hayner stared at me longer than what was considered safe. "Like _what_?"

"Everything."

Axel piped up. "The only thing it explains is what I once thought was IBS."

When we reached Xigbar's driveway, Axel snatched up both cases of beer for us, only to wordlessly evacuate the car as if he'd been exposed to the bubonic plague. It was a fair reaction considering Hayner and I were pretty repulsive in that—there's nothing to talk about because all we do is work minimum wage jobs and think through static kind of way. Neither of us had anything to brag about except how we managed to think we were better than people when we didn't even do anything. There was nothing substantial that made us put off by so many people. Maybe Hayner already knew thism which was why he was doing his best to break the mold we'd set upon leaving high school. He was bored. He didn't want to be boring, and I wasn't to the point where I had time to care. All the while, I had all the time in the world. Riddle me that.

Inside there was the continuation of loud talking, but I needed five beers to talk steady. As much as I wished I could say eleven years of gymnastics and throwing myself around to excite a crowd made me a sociable being, that wasn't the case. The worst part was I couldn't be subtle every time I opened the fridge for one of Hayner's beers. The world knew I was a social infidel hell bent on contributing to a conversation I had absolutely no connection to. Even Pence had managed to fall into conversation with Xigbar; something about Sega.

On top of being a conversational miscarriage I kept making eye contact with Axel. Out of all the people to repeatedly make eye contact with it had to be him. Not Marluxia, not Larxene, not Zexion, but _Axel_. Granted he seemed just as uncomfortable about the eye contact as me. Until it happened the hundredth time, that is. I cleared my throat and looked away with a twisted expression of acknowledgement. Axel finally laughed. He did his best to stop himself, but the laughter kept coming in sporadic rounds until he silenced it with his whiskey bottle and strode toward me. If I'd been smart I'd have asked him to buy me something stronger.

"It took me until now to realize where I've seen you before."

My gaze flitted toward his handcuff bangles. "Can't imagine where."

"When Dusk Point's cheerleading team would go to nationals my parents used to make me go to Daytona Beach with them and my aunt and uncle. Kairi's my cousin. " His voice was a hot knife through butter. "I'm not complaining. Cheerleaders aren't something to complain about, but you were on the team with her, weren't you? Don't lie. I know _everything_."

"Co-captain my senior year." As if I'd lie. Because I'd been a cheerleader, I was more than capable of throwing his stringbean ass down. "Kairi graduated when I was a freshman. I don't even know how you recognized me. That was almost five years ago."

"My memory is a pretty solid one." He offered up the whiskey bottle as a peace offering. "You look like you're having a blast."

His level of sarcasm was equivalent to my inability to keep a conversation going. The swig I knocked back was a hopeful one. "Give me another six pack. I'll be on level with you guys. Just you wait."

"You're not a casual drinker, are you?"

I was chasing whiskey with beer. "How could you tell?"

Axel snorted and motioned for me to follow him through the sliding glass door that led toward an above ground pool and rotting deck. The summer air made me want to gag, and when I watched him light his next cigarette with the barely finished one in his mouth, I waited for him to say something. Maybe he was bored, too. I couldn't imagine why when he had an entire crowd inside to jab at. Not only that, but every time I blinked there seemed to be another person walking through the front door who yelled his name and asked where he was living.

"You used to wear chaps."

"Holy shit." I nearly spat up into his bottle. "Don't ever talk to me again."

He cackled. He actually _cackled_. "I said I remember everything!"

"Well you can un-remember that as soon as fucking possible!" My skin was aflame with the need to drown myself in the pool. "I was like fourteen. I was _fourteen_."

His laughter was hinged on maniacal. I didn't think when I shoved him as if we were familiar friends. "It's not my fault you wore chaps and didn't expect it to haunt you for the rest of your life. The chaps wearing cheerleader. It sounds like a Nancy Drew novel or you know... _porn_."

"Stop saying that word!"

"What word? _Chaps_?"

By then I was inching toward the water. "You're giving me hemorrhoids. I'm going to go kill myself now."

Axel's fluorescent eyes were moist with tears. He'd laughed until he was crying. "Roxas, where are you going? That pool's probably diseased. You'll get an oozing rash."

" _Good_. Maybe I'll die faster."

He inhaled his spit. "Before you off yourself, can I have my Benchmark back?"

"Absolutely _not_."

Before I could make a break for the water he'd jogged toward me, which was terrifying. His legs could've skipped three counties with a single stretch, but I held the bottle close to me when he attempted to snatch it back. Drunk with no sense of depth perception, I was hell bent on keeping the bottle from him out of spite. The moment he'd refused to back off my chaps wearing ass was the moment he lost privilege to his whiskey. I screamed at him when he attempted to wrestle the bottle from my death grip. Larxene tapped the glass door and waved, but she had no intentions of remediating the situation.

"You can't go down with the only thing that's ever meant something to me!"

"It's like a ten dollar bottle of booze!"

"Money isn't everything, Roxas!"

Axel had his hand on the back of my neck and was attempting to force me face first onto the deck. Our yelling was escalating and I tried elbowing his skull off his head. "And inebriation is?"

I didn't expect to actually end up in the water. That was the last thing I planned throughout my declarations of suicide. So, when Larxene threw open the sliding glass door in her flag bikini with all the flounce and bounce one would expect from her flaunted curves, I couldn't imagine she had all the intentions in the world of pushing Axel's and my entangled forms into the hepatitis water. Really, I didn't know Larxene very well at all back then. Now it wouldn't come as a shock if she lit the Sears tower on fire as an artistic interpretation for her sense of humor.

Drunk and full body submergence doesn't go hand-in-hand. When we fell over with her hard shove Axel scrambled like a feral cat attempting to avoid being drenched, but he didn't make it out dry. Neither of us did, and when the gurgling water whooshed past my ears with wet pops and clicks, I blindly reached up for the surface only to realize I couldn't find it. The pool was only six feet deep at the most. It probably came across as sad I had that hard of a time finding which way the oxygen was, but four beers and four shots for someone who wasn't a regular drinker would've put anyone in vertigo. I was the human embodiment of an Alfred Hitchcock movie.

I considered the possibility that I'd die, but before the life flashing before my eyes cliché happened—as if that even happens—a set of fingers snapped down into the water and found my hair. With the kind of intake of breath the burnt up my lungs, I resurfaced by the blessing of a balding yank only to immediately cough water onto Axel's bare chest. His tattoo and unkempt happy trail seared my brain like a white-hot brand.

"Holy fuck, Larxene! Are you seriously the dumbest bitch alive?"

 _Debatable_ , seriously. She laughed with a high-pitched shriek. "He's _fine_! Aren't you, kid?"

I waved at her as I continued upchucking my lungs.

More profanity sputtered from Axel as she jumped in after us, but he wasn't sticking around to humor her. He grasped onto my biceps, lifted me like I was a paper sack, and set me on the edge of the pool. He scrutinized my face with the kind of concern deriving from a man who didn't want to end up arrested and thrown into the slammer for buying underage kids booze and killing one of them. The whiskey bottle bobbed past us toward Larxene, but it'd been long forgotten with what I considered to be a minor 'drunk and disorderly' scare.

I was still breathing hard by the time he spoke directly to me. "This water is what I imagine people smell like when they die. Bowels let loose, decomposing into an armchair, Seinfeld laugh track, sunken eyes; the works."

When I pushed the water off my face I tried my hardest to shrug off the fact I'd let aforementioned water down my throat. Granted, I'd let worse things down there. "Poetry—pure poetry."

He nervously laughed. "I'm not trying for that right now. That's for sure."

In sopping wet clothes that weighed us down, we abandoned the pool for the sliding glass door. As we were going in, people were following Larxene's lead and heading for the toxic water. All those potential yeast infections took running leaps into water too shallow for diving, but no one cared enough to think through their intoxication. Where were my friends? Good question.

Axel snatched up my beanie while walking away from the pool and proceeded to drop it into the sink when we entered the bathroom that doubled as a laundry room. The air conditioning wasn't on, but I was still shivering as I tugged off my sticking shirt and tossed it into the sink. He stayed long enough to show me the trick to starting the shower, explained he'd once lived with Xigbar for six months and then threw a clean towel at me from the bathroom closet. I caught it and wondered why I couldn't get the 'thank you' out.

Once both showered, we ended up standing side-by-side in the bathroom with towels around our waists and a severe lacking in having anything to say to one another. The washer churned and I wished I had something interesting to say. My brain was candle wax remnants on birthday cake.

"Your hair," Axel began as it started drying into a cyclone.

"Don't talk to me about hair." And I glanced over at his red mess that was yet to fluff back up. "What's the story behind that? Don't return the question. I'm genetics. That's it."

"Kind of rude to ask, don't you think?"

"If you hadn't mentioned my chaps, then I'd maybe agree."

Axel sucked air through his clenched teeth and then laughed. " _Why_? Do you think it looks stupid?"

"There are a lot of other things about you I'd call stupid before that."

"Jesus Christ, kid. You are fucking _cold_." He ran his fingers through the matted locks. "I've had hair like this since before graduation. Couldn't tell you what I was thinking at fifteen. That was like twelve years ago."

We stared at one another for too long after the reality of his age settled in for the both of us. From there the two of us dragged the rest of Hayner's beer into the bathroom where we waited for our clothes to finish drying and proceeded to silently get wasted in each other's company. Whenever someone attempted to come inside to piss, Axel unblinkingly informed whomever that a fat Mexican drunk and underage white boy occupied the bathroom. The only things remotely true about that statement were the Mexican, white boy and drunk parts.

"Why're you even here?" Axel suddenly asked when we were down to the final minutes. "Ten time national champions cheerleading squad co-captain still in Dusk Point. Did you get a job or something?"

"Twenty hours a week at the movie rental place is a real reason to stay here."

" _Wow_ ," he murmured, stupefied. "That place is still open. Demyx is persistent…"

"Hardly." I cracked open a beer. "But why does anyone stay in Dusk Point?"

Axel's brow quirked upward as his lips twisted to the side and he removed his inquiring gaze from my face. "That's a million dollar question if I've ever heard one."

I didn't talk again until our clothes were dry and I found myself ineptly shoeing myself into a pair of boxers. Our backs were turned to one another and I was the first to turn back only to see an ass. What accompanied said ass was the reason I let loose a gurgling laugh that sounded like a car sinking into a pond.

Axel looked over his shoulder at me, glanced down and then looked at the floor before laughing. "You dig it?"

"Maybe if I knew what the hell it is."

"When I turned eighteen I decided I wanted something to commemorate my newfound freedom." Axel smoothed his hand along his right ass cheek and there was a twinge of secondhand embarrassment from me. He was _swelling_ with pride. "But I lived with my parents, so I had to get it somewhere they'd never look. And here we are. Almost ten years later. In case you didn't know, tattoos are forever."

"Here we are indeed." On Axel's ass was a squiggly half-circle with a line swiped beneath it followed by a pair of dates and a couple of flowers. The corner of my mouth quirked up, as if I couldn't decide if I wanted to laugh again. "So what the hell is it? A rock with dates carved into it?"

"Think about what you just described and then look closely." He was still standing there naked.

I shook my head and the booze was making my laughter bubble over. "No way am I getting closer to your ass, man- _oh, wow_ … It's a tombstone. Of course it's a tombstone. You should've let me drown."

"Probably." Axel stepped into his pants and did a couple hops to yank them toward his bony hips. "It's a GG Allin tattoo. I had it done on a kitchen counter when I first started hanging with Xigbar. He was less gray, but there were also way more cockroaches around here. Life's a little give and take like that."

There was no more room in my night for another bout of Axel. We'd drank enough for someone like me, and soon the beer was cradled in my arms as I trudged out of the bathroom. I don't know how long we were in there. My grandma wouldn't let me do my own laundry, so I wasn't sure about a wash cycle's timer, but when we stepped into the living room it was as if a tornado had blown through and thrown everyone outside. A bonfire had been started, but I wanted to sleep. Just thinking about a bed made me hormonal. I didn't find a bed, though. The couch was empty, Axel asked me if I was okay one more time, and I flopped onto my back.

"Don't let me asphyxiate on my own vomit."

Axel snorted. "I don't think you're there yet, but I'll check on you later."

Whether or not he checked on me came to light the next morning. When I woke up to Hayner shaking me and asking where I'd been all night it was the ass crack of dawn. I swatted at him, he rolled his eyes and yanked me up by my bicep. "Dude, let's go. Olette and Pence are already in the car, and if I hear Olette say 'egg white delight' one more time I might just scramble her face."

It wasn't until I'd groggily stumbled off the couch, through the yard and sat down in the back seat beside Pence did I look down at my arm and see something scrawled across my forearm.

_CALL ME, AXEL_

_XXX-XXXX_

* * *

 I didn't call Axel for three days. Mainly because I couldn't remember if we'd found any common ground between one another or if we'd just been fleetingly drunk compatible. This was an inexcusable move on my part because I _needed_ friends. There were only so many things the same four people could come up with before all of our hangouts morphed into a singular moment of monotony. To be honest, I was desperate for people outside of my comfort zone, and the entire time I sat behind my counter at work, counting the pornographic movies that slipped through the outside deposit box, I wondered how I was supposed to get out of town alive without becoming too attached to new people. It wasn't like I could bring them with me.

Dusk Point's movie rental store was a testament to 1998. It was the place that made me believe the VHS wasn't a myth and had actually happened. I had the proof piled up in a back storage room, lining shelves and through my manager's impossible enthusiasm for tapes. Demyx not only managed the place, but he owned it. Sometimes he talked about converting it into a partial record store, but he wasn't sure if Dusk Point was ready for the rebirth of the growing vinyl trend. He managed to keep a movie rental store afloat during a time when they were virtually extinct and was unassumingly business savvy down to the pornography he picked out for the truckers.

I took my breaks across the street at the combination Taco Bell and Pizza Hut that tripled as a trucker's oasis. More than once I'd been offered a few hundred dollars to suck someone's dick with no strings attached, and more than once I'd paused too long in consideration. It wasn't like I had a reputation to soil. Would anyone ever find out I hopped into the front seat for five minutes and made more money than I did in a single twenty-five hour week? Probably not, but explaining the chlamydia on the back of my throat at the health department in front of all of my grandmother's nursing friends sounded intermediately miserable. Plus, I'd watched Joy Ride one too many times not to think about homicide the entire time I performed fallatio.

"You're lookin' kind of spacey, Roxas." Demyx announced in a sing-song voice that carried from one end of the store to the other. "More than usual."

I chewed through another freezer burnt pizza roll before talking. "You hang out with Axel, right?"

The sound of Demyx dropping a couple tapes and immediately swearing followed suit. "Do you mean Axel like- Axel _Olivares_?"

The fact that he'd rolled his 'r' made me smile. "I have no idea what his name is. He's red."

"That'd be Olivares." Demyx kept extracting tapes to make sure they were rewound. "Why're you asking?"

"What's his story?"

"I asked my question first."

" _Uh..._ I'm not playing that game." I dragged a finger through my remaining ranch dressing and sucked it off, but I relented when it became clear Demyx wouldn't spill unless I did first. "I hung out at Xigbar's the other night. We ended up talking, and I think he wants to be friends. That or I'm really bad at registering mating calls."

" _Seriously_ , Roxas?" He abandoned his work and turned toward me. "They're all trash."

"They're your _friends_."

"And my _friends_ are trash."

A stare off ensued. I proceeded to tip back my opened Big Gulp and crunch on ice for a couple seconds before speaking. "Now answer my question about Axel."

"He's like scum lord supreme. He's the king of indecent exposure and public intoxication. I'm pretty sure his arrest list is longer than a receipt from Extreme Couponing. There isn't much to him, really. I'll never know how he hasn't been locked up for longer than thirty days. The dude is like a courtroom escape artist." He scrunched his nose in disgust and laughed. "That bastard is really sad. Making friends with kids."

"He's younger than you."

"By like-two days."

"Three years, but okay."

After work, two tacos and another large diet soda I called Axel and got his voicemail. The only thing that it said was a clipped 'no,' and I hung up so fast at the beep I nearly broke my fingers. Sitting in my grandma's van with fast food wrappers spread across my lap and embarrassment churning my insides like butter, I decided to wait until he called me back. Surely a mysterious local number would warrant a call back at some point. Too bad I didn't expect that callback to happen immediately. The ringing made my stomach ache. Way too much grease and excitement at once was my diagnosis. Also, my life was boring.

I answered too fast and sounded winded. " _Hey_."

"Roxas, blond kid, the other night?"

"How did you know?"

"There are only two people who call me mid-afternoon on a weekday. My mother and parole officer, which are pretty much the same thing nowadays."

"You wrote your number on my arm…"

He paused. "I used a Sharpie. Sorry about that."

"It only took five showers and lye soap that burned a hole through my tendons, but I forgive you." Sometimes I wondered why words came out of my mouth. "What's going on with you?"

"Sleeping… I was sleeping, but I went to bed at 7 AM so I feel it's justified." He made a grunting noise and the scratching of him attempting to ignite a lighter pushed through the receiver. "What're you doing right now?"

"Sitting in my car (Grandma's Van) outside of work." I pushed the paper off my lap and exhaled when lettuce spilled onto the floor. "My shift ended ten minutes ago."

"Where do you work?"

"Movie rental place…"

"Oh, yeah… Demyx's place, right?" He snorted and half-coughed as he laughed. "He's such a piece of shit."

"He's not a bad boss, though." I wasn't sure why I was defending him.

"Boss doesn't balance the entire person." Axel dropped the topic and cleared his throat. "If you're not doing anything, then we should hangout."

My hands pushed against the thighs of my jeans and I glanced toward the front window of my work where Demyx was watching. We made eye contact and he gestured wildly and seemingly concerned before backing away. I tried not to laugh at him. "Where do you live?"

"See that's the problem. I'm locked out of my house."

"Now that _is_ a problem. Why didn't you just break in?"

"Only one window is unlocked and it's high. Boost me in and we'll hang out there."

"You're kidding."

He _wasn't_ kidding and I had nothing better to do unless I wanted to play Scrabble with Grandma. After he promised to hand me gas money, he told me he was still at Xigbar's house and he'd meet me outside so that Xigbar didn't drag me into a know-all lecture. For the first time in my life I cared that I was driving a van. What was I going to do? Paint the town red in Grandma's sweet ride? I guess so. It wasn't like I had any other choice. To top it off there wasn't one but two carseats in the back covered in crumbs and baby spit up.

Xigbar's lawn was bare except for his rusted pickup truck and Axel was lazily sprawled out on his back smoking his time away and swaying on the porch swing. He wasn't wearing leopard print, but a pair of black cigarette pants that were significantly cleaner, and I said a prayer when he stood up with a smile. That smile was mocking my Grandma Van, and I sank down in the driver's seat hoping some cataclysmic like sudden heart failure would end it all right there. Dying would be great.

"Nice ride." He also had less stubble and looked even younger. "House is behind the hospital."

He fiddled with my iPod the entire time and didn't say much aside from asking if I had suffered any long term injury from the pool incident. When I shook my head he went back to being the music-focused co-pilot and only spoke up when we neared his house. Immediately, I knew something was wrong. Not only was his neighborhood the small town equivalent to Elysian Fields, but… no, that was about it. By the United States' law of class and societal norm he didn't belong. These were the houses appointed to lawyers, people who'd finagled their way into small town government and new car dealership owners. Gaudy copper marquees speckled every other home, there were actually pillars and timed sprinklers in every front yard. When he pointed out his house I swallowed my disbelief and nodded a bit with a short 'nice.' Because it _was_ nice. It was holy shit amazing.

"My mother's a real estate agent. Best one in town…" He explained as we got out of the car after he told me to park around back. When we arrived at the high window he'd mentioned I realized what he'd meant by the window being out of reach. He was tall, but there was no way he could reach the one left unlocked.

Cheerleading has set me up to be good at two things; using parkour to run from people such as the cops and pushing bodies through windows. Both of which I never use so really I haven't gotten much out of it all aside from memories of happier more carefree days I wish I could go back to. It was why pushing Axel through was a breeze. When he hit the inside with a hard thud I laughed at him.

He leaned out the window. "Give me two seconds. I'll let you inside. Don't mind the emptiness. My parents and I are fighting like dogs over this place. Long story for another day."

"I'll take your word for it."

"Sweet."

It took Axel a couple minutes to reach the back garage door and open it, but when he let me in I spotted a parked Lexus. "Are you kidding me?"

He seemed unfazed. "That's also a conversation for another day."


	3. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long. Recently my mother's been very sick and things have been absolute chaos with me trying to transfer into a new school and juggle all of the family drama. Thanks for being so patient. I owe my readers tons.

Realizing that it's time to grow up is crippling. Crippling in the way that we spend so long reassuring ourselves we can take on the world only to have the kaleidoscope tunnel ripped from our hands when we walk across a graduation stage and enter the 'real world.' The real world is my favorite concept, because let's be honest here—reality is a subjective sort of placement in the human consciousness where we conveniently pick at what we want to concentrate on and give it some kind of importance. Not that it's a bad thing. It's a survival thing. The 'real world' is prioritizing. It's realizing those times you looked out your school bus window and cried to Good Charlotte are no longer given headway when you have to pay rent and impress a professor who could make or break a someday career. The real world is coming to terms with 'not mattering' as much as you once thought you were going to, which is fine. This coming to terms happens to mostly everyone.

But what happens when you refute that systematic ploy rooted in sociological bullshit? Or at least try to. I can't give that answer to anyone, so I'm being genuine when I wonder that, but my theory is that those people morph into the kids like Axel and Larxene. The world isn't built for individuals who can't let go of the Get Out of Jail Free cards being young places into our hands. It's up to young adults to decide when they can burn those cards or tape them into the scrapbooks of 'once upon a time,' and we all come to that point, in theory. But Axel wasn't there yet. It radiated off of him down to his body language, strange enunciations and gesticulations. I decided I liked him, though. Being able to relate to him wasn't necessarily healthy on his side of the lawn, but it worked out for my comfort zones or lack thereof.

Axel's hands smoothed along the professionally painted walls of a house he believed belonged to him. As he spoke, he pushed his free hand into a back pocket. He was in love with the crown molding and the details that had been hand-carved into the baseboards. Beneath his feet were dark wood floorboards he called 'Midnight Birch' and beyond the den sat a collection of stainless steal appliances in a chef's kitchen that'd been designed for someone who knew how to appreciate the price of granite and the differences between imported truffle oil and the selection found in the local Kroger's aisle. For a split second, Axel's eyes coated the room in pride, but then it drifted into an unlit stare of weak disappointment with whatever was in front of him.

That's how his expressions shifted. It was like taking sips of weak coffee. He didn't put the right amount of scoops into the filter, and he dripped out in a slow caramel stream. It was a little disappointing to sip on, but I wasn't in the mind or place to be making calls on personality when I hardly had one of my own. It was easy for me to radiate disconnection because I'd convinced myself I wasn't going to dig my roots into the soil of Dusk Point if I didn't intend on staying. Plus, I wasn't the life of the party either, really. All that I was good at was ruffling my own feathers and feeling guilty about bringing Jose Cuervo into my grandmother's house even though she made a mean Bourbon Manhattan every Saturday.

"Did we just break into a house or is this really yours?" I pushed my fingers along the smooth countertop and then scrunched my nose when I left behind grease trails. It was the remnants of tacos and shame.

He glanced over his shoulder and then looked upon the sparse emptiness. There were pieces of matched furniture left behind, but it wasn't enough to make the place appear lived in. Clearly, the residence had been staged for the sake of realty. Whatever was going on here had undercurrents of embarrassing sadness, leaving me in a tight spot with words building up along the back of my teeth. Axel and I were barely on a first name basis and he'd tugged my arm behind my back and asked me to play the sympathizer. He was barking up the wrong tree. My empathy levels were in the dumpster for multiple reasons.

"This is where I keep the shit I don't want stolen. My friends aren't the worst people on the planet, but they sure as hell know how to stick their fingers to things that don't belong to them. I guess once you've raised a little hell for a while it gets you deep."

"That's some kind justification," I said, clearly disagreeing with him. "You don't think I'm going to steal anything?"

"You're not the kind that likes to raise Cane. I saw it on your face the other night."

"Was that before or after I fell harder than a child star into the pool?"

Axel flashed me a smile, and I wondered if he'd once had nice teeth. Odds were, if this had ever been his home, then he'd been something along the lines of consistently well kept and purposely scraggy. A sort of homage to an era with a foundation poured by Iggy Pop and Nirvana; gross but with a statement; deadbeat but just so to make the clock tick. Some kind of metaphorical pursuit of self-augmented happiness I'd never overthought while in high school. He'd probably read a lot of Kurt Vonnegut and quoted Chuck Palahniuk as if _Fight Club_ mattered. Axel was the pseudo-intellect grown up. Or that's how I imagined him. But what did I _really_ know about Axel? I'd only known him long enough to make snap judgments that suddenly seemed more like fantasies.

"You said something kind of interesting the other night." He stepped with a kind of pop to his hip, and I found myself focusing on it. The animal instinct to tear into it bothered and allowed me to file through the incomprehensible amount of pornography downloaded on my laptop. Determined to pretend I wasn't a degenerate sex starved ingot, I began rubbing at the grease spot even harder, only spreading the transparent stain. "Something about why people stay behind in Dusk Point, and I was like 'million dollar question' or whatever."

I vaguely remembered. "Yeah, _yeah_ —drunk talk about displacement in the whole world's scope. Not liking our spot through the lens. That kind of thing."

When I glanced up he was inspecting me with a narrowed in stare, smiling because of _something_. The way his expression could convey paragraphs upon paragraphs of unsaid conversation left the tone opaque. "Who's your favorite author?"

He'd asked the worst question. "Dennis Cooper, maybe? What about you?"

"I read a lot from the Beat Generation; Kerouac, Burroughs, Kaufman, Ginsberg. I once fantasized about Tangier and heading there post-undergraduate to pursue some kind of skiver artisan life." The name of surrealists and poets had hobbled out of his mouth, and I chewed on that suddenly even more interested in how wrong my early perception could be. "But William S. Burroughs resonated with me the most. Somewhere, I have everything he wrote and a couple collector's editions."

"He's the one who wrote _Junky_ , right?" There was mocking implication there. "Is that one your favorite? Or is it _Naked Lunch_?"

" You know," and he sounded surprisingly curt. As if that sentence had started on a cut in half breath. "It's actually _Queer_."

The way the title tugged off the back of his tongue with the faintest twang forced my heart to drop onto my bowels with a dirty splat. Our eye contact went from politely obligated to pointed and searching. That double entendre had to have been imagined, but then again, there was no possible way someone like him from some place like Dusk Point would risk being mistaken for _that_. This was the place where people still believed, if you spat on them, they could contract AIDS and proceed to catch 'the gay' and die within two weeks. This was not a progression Harvey Milk amusement park where you dropped your sexuality like howdy-do and dreamt of world change as if it were an actuality.

"I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't that." Whichever _thing_ I meant was up for him to determine. He could pick and choose, but I knew which direction I was hoping he'd go in. My life was already too boring to talk about literature.

"Small towns don't make small minds so much as they make it easier to hide behind the excuse of isolation," he muttered and headed toward the fridge, opening it only to show off that it was full. "People play dumb because it's easier."

"That sounds like something a rich person would say."

He barked out a laugh. " _Good one_."

Was I about to be deflowered? Was that the point of this entire hangout? Had he sensed my un-stretched sphincter or was my personality really that 'sleeveless turtleneck?' I had no delusions about my presence on the planet. Aside from being conventionally beautiful, there wasn't much going for me. My palms were sweating, and I was going to start to smell like onions if he didn't say something. I should've never eaten tacos. My life was full of so many _terrible_ mistakes.

"Hey," Axel snapped a bit, about to drink from a container of orange juice while eyeing me. What an animal. "You doing okay over there? I -uh, didn't scare you or anything, right?"

When I glanced up he was rolling his tongue along his left canine with a furrowed brow and some kind of contemplative stare that all at once dissolved. Maybe he realized what my damage was, but I was going to delude myself into thinking otherwise in the name of self-preservation. Axel swallowed a couple thoughtful gulps, and as my grandpa would say, 'he was drilling for oil.' Leave it to me to think about my grandparents while simultaneously panicking about becoming the metaphor behind _Little Red Riding Hood_. I'd stopped surprising myself long before the rest of the world could begin taking notice.

" _Perfect_ ," I said with a haggard cough.

Axel pushed the carton of juice back into the fridge and sharply strode around the island. His shoulder brushed against mine with a playful shove, and when we made eye contact I made believe every ounce of implication behind those small waggling eyebrows. He wanted me to follow him through the house, and for the shortest of seconds, I wondered if he was a serial killer. This was rational thinking. Media had prepared me to be snobbishly afraid for my life, especially since I was white, blond haired, blue eyed and middle class. This social commentary aside, my feet dragged along the hardwood and into a back room that extended off what looked to be the main living room, but this was the kind of house created to have multiple unused 'living' rooms. Like grandma dens but without the kitschy charm.

"Why're you _still_ in Dusk Point, Roxas?"

My mouth was dry when it began formulating words, and I wished I was drunk because then what I was about to say would've at least been justified. "Because I'm not good at anything that matters yet."

Axel's whistle was meant to emulate exasperation, but it was strangely melodic. "I'm just gonna pull out my 1998 Elliot Smith vinyl to cheer us up now."

"That was pretty bad, I know."

I realized we were standing face-to-face with a baby grand piano that shimmered as if God's calling had breathed through the blinds and cast a holy glow upon it. Glossy and black in its own designated music room, the piano was an intimidating structure surrounded by built in shelves with dusty trophies and framed pictures slated by shadows. It was the only room throughout the house I was yet to see that wasn't entirely stripped to its bleached bones. It had meat and fully functional organs. There was real life breathed into the neo-antiquated wallpaper, and I looked to Axel with a questioning stare, wanting him to answer every obvious question I had.

He sat down on the bench with a lazy plop only to uncover the keys with a quick lift and push. All of his movements seemed fatigued, as if what he was about to do presented a weight he wasn't being paid to lift.

"You know…" Axel rolled his lips together and he dragged his thumb over a dusty key. "Purpose is a subjective thing. What matters should be based on internalized self-worth and not the factory-manufactured premise Dusk Point assigns us, but you know, that's just me. My, uh, _junky_ opinion is low bred on the totem poll in these parts."

I wasn't sure what _that_ was supposed to mean, but I'd thought I'd been fair with him up until that point. Apparently not, but he more than likely had that sort of 'if someone said something shitty to me here, then everyone must think I'm trash' self-concept, which actually wasn't far off the mark. Denying Dusk Point's hive mind took away some of the town's more colorful whimsy and wonder.

"We do live in society where you better walk the walk if you're talking the talk," I said, a little too blunt.

Axel laughed and he looked at me with a questioning stare. If only I could've known how deeply that might've offended him. I had no gauge on how mean I sounded, and it'd gotten me into trouble more than once. "That's true."

Out of nowhere, probably because he no longer wanted to hear my voice, his fingers began dancing across the keys, and it was as if he'd sprinkled magical fertilizer on my ribcage and told my bones to bloom. I didn't know anything about the piano, music or what made someone talented. Our marching band had made it to State Finals when I was a senior in high school, but that'd been about the end of my exposure to live music. All that I knew was, though his spidery fingers seemed awkward along the black and white, they somehow managed uncommon fluidity.

My lips parted, and I must've looked stupid. It wasn't my fault I'd never seen someone exhibit that much talent in person since my sophomore year at Nationals when an Olympic gymnast was on a squad and creamed us. The way his tendons flexed and wrists rolled with trained refinement made me squint, because it wasn't _human_. He was playing something that wasn't necessarily classical. I would've _very_ ignorantly referred to it as jazz, maybe even just contemporary. Axel lulled his head from side-to-side as if it was nothing, and he even breathed easier.

"If talent is what you're looking for," Axel spoke over his music, not even looking at the keys, "then you should know it's a dime a dozen. Talent is not what makes people care about you, what makes you matter to people, to yourself. Talent is the last fucking thing that gets you out of here." He continued driving at the keys, and a chill shot up my spine. "You find something that matters to you. Something that pisses you off to the point of no return, and then that anger makes you leave and never come back _home_."

"So, what happened to you?"

Axel suddenly stopped, and a soft echo resonated throughout the house with an imagined shimmer on my part. "The boredom got to me first, maybe? I'm still trying to figure it out, too. Maybe I got tired of being angry all the fucking time? It's easier to be nothing than make something, but that's only so obvious."

For the sake of us both, I cracked a smile. "So, where's that Elliot Smith record?"

He scooted over, and I saw he was making room for me. "Have you ever touched one of these before?"

"An electric one, once. _Maybe_."

Axel patted that sleek surface, and I sat down beside him. Whatever he taught me in those next moments I don't remember. Something about there being a C key and reiterating how I wasn't musically inclined at all, but he hardly seemed like the same character I'd watched resist arrest. That's when I noticed his handcuff bangles were no longer on his wrists. I knew better than to ask how he'd gotten rid of them, but the thought still lingered as his body heat radiated against my shoulder. My fingers clumsily skittered across the keys' surface while he dug deep and wrenched out my heart with every note he was able to project between us.

"Did you want to be a concert pianist?"

"Something like that," he answered half-heartedly. "If you could be anything, then what would you be?"

"Growing up the only thing I told myself was that I wasn't going to be on welfare, and someone told me the only way to do that was do well in school and sports, so I did both and forget how to have interests. I'm the most uninteresting person I know with not much to show for the hard work I put into myself. So, I could never figure out what I really wanted beyond high school."

"You've got one hell of a six-pack," Axel murmured with the slyest side-eye I'd seen him make, and I mirrored it with one of my own. "I noticed."

As _not_ reassuring as that had been, it was still a compliment. "You're pretty perceptive. What _else_ did you notice?"

"That you think my GG Allin tattoo is stupid."

"I'm going to think any ass tattoo is stupid. Sorry, but not actually remotely close to being sorry." When he reached out to push at my head, I laughed and snatched his wrist from mid-air while ducking down. "Just being honest."

Realizing I was still holding onto his wrist, I acknowledged overstaying my welcome by giving his wrist a prolonged and very stupid look. Our stares connected for the shortest of seconds, and he raised an eyebrow as if asking me the question neither of us wanted to ask each other, but it was silently being screamed back and forth until I thought my eardrums would rupture. The pressure of being the oldest with the most experience between us must've finally seeped into his skin, because he took control of the situation by grasping onto the wrist of the hand holding his and tugging me close enough so that our noses were centimeters apart.

He had to hunch over _a lot_ , but he hardly seemed to mind. Meanwhile, as I tried to smile back, my free hand clenched tightly to the edge of the bench and I busted blood vessels in my fingers while pretending my name wasn't Roxas "There Are No Boys Who Hit On Me So I Am Very Alarmed Right Now" Trashcan with the desperation of someone stranded on an island. There was a pause where Axel searched my face, and I realized _he_ was hesitating with the lightest hum, as if flat-out contemplating directly in front of me. He wasn't hiding his uncertainty. I wasn't sure if it was protocol to be offended or not.

Suddenly he puffed out air as if he were preparing himself for the final inning. It was then I realized he was nervous. Axel, of all people, was apprehensive. He crinkled a brow, and I thought to pull away. "You kind of move fast, don't you?"

_I_ moved fast? "You think I'm _fast_."

"No, not like _that_." He stopped himself and caught the side of my face. I wanted to go more into me 'moving fast,' but he refused to let go of whatever spell his wrist being grabbed had cast. " _Oof_ —I'll stop talking."

I told myself Axel was practice for my Plan B career as a truck stop prostitute. While I'd expected his rotted gums to possess hints of Cheez-Its, like baked Ped Egg flakes, his tongue tasted more along the lines of orange juice and stale smoke. Moving fast didn't seem like an issue, in hindsight. There wasn't anything else for me to do in Dusk Point, except this, _him_. He in himself was the commodity. Lingering in the back of my mind was the knowledge I wouldn't be there forever, and Axel didn't breathe 'infinity' into my lungs when his fingers shifted into my bird nest hair and brought me close. He moved his mouth like someone who'd endlessly talked only for the sake of talking, and there was hidden vulnerability in how his fingers knew where to travel. The pads of his digits pressed against the points of my elbows, and he dragged his nails along the slopes of my mysteriously bruised forearms only to push them toward the palms I'd once let a young girl read in a booth on Daytona Beach.

For a chemical kid, he was a natural. Kissing wasn't supposed to extract the glass cube from my chest and send it hurdling against a concrete wall, but it combusted with a shatter that didn't stop ringing until I reached for the sides of his head and stuttered on air. Stalactite hair that was soft beneath my hands flattened while I wished I knew exactly what to do when I touched another human being. We were built on instincts and evolutionary brilliance, but there I was fumbling in my affections during what was obviously a meaningless kiss. My shaking arms aside; I knew it could be fun if he let me play my hand of cards against his. The problem being he actually _knew_ the game. I'd only witnessed a couple matches that were far and few in between. People like Axel Olivares weren't the kind meant for the front step of your grandparents' house, and that thought was why I turned so I was straddling the bench and exposed to the concept. _There we go._ He was a 'concept.'

"You've been shaking the entire time." Which he shouldn't have pointed out. I pressed a thumb against the flats of my knuckles and heard them crack one after another. The custard sun warmed his eyes, and until then, I hadn't found him pretty. He was, though. Once upon a time, he must've been the handsomest piece of potential Dusk Point had ever seen. In high school, I probably would've been in love with him and cried myself to sleep over wanting his dick down my throat because I was terrified of whether or not it'd make me feel good. "Too fast?"

My tongue folded in on itself, but he took that as an answer. Our kiss ended with a final pop, and I caught myself hanging onto it longer than either of us intended. All it took was raising my chin to follow his attempt to leave and he paused to linger with faux-affection. Axel humoring me in my time of need was nice but still hollow drivel that only made my skin prick and lips tingle long after he'd pointedly pressed that C key again and tugged away. Watching him with a freshly bloomed kind of admiration, it was clear I really _was_ dropping coconuts on myself at the first sight of a string bean in a loincloth killing a boar for food. Axel was close-lipped smiling, too. What had happened between us clearly satisfied something, which left me less inclined to grab my keys and abandon the bench for my van. He'd probably only needed me for a ride, but I could delude myself into thinking he'd planned this from the start.

"Did you want to go back to Xigbar's with me tonight?"

More roaches, more booze, more kush. Did my grandma need her van later on? That was the question that mattered. My lips were sticky when I thought to part them as if readying an answer, but his phone rang. Axel raised a finger so that I'd hold my thought and answered with a tired 'hello.' He wasn't all that interested in whoever was on the other line even though they were important enough for him to get up and leave me alone in the music room. In the kitchen, where he'd wandered off to, I could hear his muffled murmuring. Something about getting something done on time, promises, and it was shady but not unexpected.

He returned and checked the time on his phone with a swallow. The way his Adam's apple gingerly rolled forced me to look away and back at the keys. "We could go now, if you wanted. I mean, it's whatever. Unless you wanted to watch a movie here or something to kill time until everyone's there. Party buildup blows."

A movie meant sitting near him with even more opportunities to suck face like desperate cephalopods. It was tempting. "I'm a Libra. I can't decide on anything without someone holding my hand. This is up to you or I'll sit here cold sweating for an hour weighing the pros and cons about going over there and hanging out with _Xigbar_." Of all people. We didn't have anything in common. "It could be fun." But probably not. No, most definitely not. But only because I was me. "There really isn't a whole lot of anything to do here, is there?"

Axel dryly laughed and pocketed his phone. "Let's go to Xigbar's and see if he'll let us smoke him out."

Before Axel and I left for Xigbar's he made a pit stop in his upstairs bedroom, pocketed whatever he needed and returned to me with a grin. We left through the front door, which he locked behind himself with a sharp twist of the knob after dangling the spare he'd hidden beneath the inside doormat. It was still early in the afternoon when we showed up at the mostly dead house. The entire drive there I'd wondered why Axel hadn't thought to mention we'd kissed. Maybe that would've been weird, but he'd kissed me and left it as is. My fingers had sweated on the steering wheel, and I was still trying to dry them when we stepped inside, greeted by the sight of Marluxia determined to figure out Luxord's card tricks.

"This is fucking stupid," he murmured as Luxord cackled and shuffled his deck with fluid ease. Marluxia snapped his attention toward us. "Axel and Underage Friend, what a pleasant surprise."

"Roxas," Axel corrected pointedly and ruffled my hair, purposely puffing up my cowlick before disappearing into the kitchen and returning with two Bud Lights. "Where's Xigbar? Thought he didn't have to work today."

Luxord was still mindlessly splitting the deck. "He's in the basement. Larxene took his car to run his credit card to hell and back at the liquor store. Roxas, come here and let me show you a trick! Experience the carousel that's been giving Marluxia ulcers for an hour!" But Axel grabbed my shoulders and guided me away from Luxord and down the hallway before I could even begin to consider. "Impressive asshole skills, Axel! Be a little weirder while you're at it! If he does something strange, then scream for us, Roxas! We'll keep the music low and we know the difference between the good kind of scream and the bad, bad, _bad_ kind!"

"Dicks," Axel muttered under his breath. We stepped into a junked guest bedroom Axel apparently spent plenty of time in because he dragged his fingers along the Xbox's circular button, giving off the defining 'ding' and began shoveling a mix of National Geographic and pornographic magazines (all straight) off the full mattress. They dropped onto twisted piles of dirty clothing, knocking over emptied beer bottles and sushi containers. Beneath a pillow, I spotted a tablet covered in both retrograde punk stickers and the Blink-182 insignia. He swiped it up and shoved it into a crammed drawer before collapsing onto the mattress right as he turned the flat screen on with the remote. "You can sit down and not awkwardly stand there beside the bed. I'm not going to make it weird."

Beds had implications, but that was only because my ideations of human interaction were just that, _ideations_. People cramming themselves onto lumpy mattresses just to intertwine arms and experience human comfort while zoning in and out of that week's Relevant Director's filmography wasn't a new practice. Half of my high school existence had orbited around the soft moments when I hid my face in the curve of a fellow squad member's milky elbow and listened to her cycle through the same convoluted topics that were sex, celestial bodies and college. Questions about purpose always found themselves quietly dismissed by God fearing reassurances, but I knew that, if any of them had an inkling of faith, then they wouldn't have been forcing the Late Teen Existential Crisis on themselves from overcompensating to 'get out' of Dusk Point.

There was no greater fear than being 'perpetually this.' Forever off the radar and continuously oppressed nothingness that no one except Grandma's Friends cared to discuss over cups of instant coffee and medicinally green bowls of muskmelon. To be celebrated was to be scandalized, which I wasn't hell bent on for a life purpose. Dropping my limbs onto a bed beside Axel of all people wasn't supporting that case, but I reminded myself I was bored. Bored beyond tears, masturbatory success and every postmodern film I'd forced myself to appreciate during the sluggish afternoons brimming with the stuffy nothingness that was another night without drinking or pointlessly burning through gas fumes along swiveling back roads. This was a chance to be caught up in something other than those who'd moved on without me.

Larxene appeared in the doorway, as I was discretely slamming down half my Bud Light and taking a seat beside Axel. The cutting look she forced onto me wasn't threatening so much as it was speculative. "Hiding out?"

Still being evaluated like a calf in the stockyard, my shoulders shifted and I concentrated on the straight-to-video horror movie that'd somehow ended up on screen. Axel brought the neck of his beer bottle to his cheek as if cooling his skin and dismissed her with an uninterested side stare neither Larxene nor I had expected. Her grip on the doorframe visibly tightened because that quirked look of Axel's was fully intended to make her feel stupid for asking. As if to say, _of course we're hiding, so could you please do fuck all elsewhere?_ Larxene caught the hint, but she stood her ground, unfazed, with her hip bounced to one side and simper established.

Axel remained leaned back on his elbows, head cocked to the side and fist clenching the sweating bottle. With a single bony knee drawn up, he hardly looked comfortable. "Sure looks like it, huh?"

"Come out and socialize with us. Some girl was speaking in tongues at school the other day, and I think you'd enjoy the story." She smiled when Axel coughed out a laugh and I mouthed a short 'what' that she nodded at. Larxene decided to acknowledge me, which clearly took effort on her part. "At the cosmetology school my instructor had her sister come in with her Christian band to sing songs for us. One of the students said God was trying to speak through her, so she started talking in this Klingon shit."

"Did you stay for all of it?" Axel finally turned to face her, interested. "I probably would've walked out and gotten myself some therapy."

"I _had_ to, but the entire time I was like, 'what if I'm so allergic to Jesus I throw up _right now_?' My anxiety was through the roof. People were _crying_ , and it's like, why're you even bringing God into cosmetology? We're there to make people's existences even shallower. 'Lessening ugly' hardly sounds Jesus Approved."

Marluxia's low groan of dismay echoed down the hallway and was accompanied by his approaching footsteps. "You _should've_ puked." He appeared behind her, towering over the girl by what looked to be an entire foot and used her shoulder as the resting place for his sweating can of Ski. "They probably would've suspended your financial aid or lynched you behind the health food place next door."

"I would've _welcomed_ it."

Axel snorted into his beer and propped his head up on a palm. "I told you about the box, right? When that fire and brimstone preacher Xemnas brought in a box that was supposed to be an allegory for the congregation's 'Heart for Jesus,' and midway into the sermon he punched through the cardboard as some punctuation on a guilt trip. People were crying, not because they were relieved, you know? It was a total hoard mind mentality. Instead of maybe mentioning there might be something _wrong_ , they kept sobbing because that's the kind of behavior rewarded around here."

"People who hold onto religion like that make it seem like a widespread mental illness." My unexpected contribution was met with a nod of solidarity from both Marluxia and Larxene, and Luxord was soon behind them, trying to shuffle into the bedroom so that the hallway wasn't as crowded. The conversation apparently had magnetism to it, because we were only missing Xigbar. "One of my high school teachers once told her class she'd almost fallen off the porch, but God caught her and that was what was getting her through that week. It's like, some people are so out of touch they're using religion as a way to abstain from reality. They ruin it for everyone else."

"Karl Marx did say religion is the opiate of the masses," Axel heaved out his words as he reached over me for the lighter on his nightstand. The weird instinct to smell him waxed and waned at the speed of light. "You know how dogs can sense people are evil? That's my reaction to religious crowds."

"People have done some evil things for Jesus. Speaking of evil," Luxord turned to Larxene who was trying to take Marluxia's soda for herself. She had her fingers wrapped around the can when she paused. "Remember when your teacher said the Devil was trying to get into her car? What was _that_ even about?"

The announcement of Xigbar via his raw cough and heavy boots struck down the story, and our audience dissipated to its original corners of the house, making me wonder who exactly Xigbar was to everyone. Axel grunted when he sat up to take another chug, and I stared at the door while waiting for Xigbar to make his presence known. Larxene mentioning us in passing was apparently good enough. He never even headed our direction.

The bottled beer I'd placed on the nightstand was giving me the _look_ , but I wasn't sure how to deal with the beverage. Maybe I was the Patron Saint of Nursing Homes and TV Guide, but there was a social faux pas polluting the atmosphere. If I drank that early, then how demolished was I okay with becoming before eight in the afternoon? Did the idea of being face down and ass up by the time the Early Bird Special was finished being served possess the probability of being half as enticing as it sounded? Yes, actually. Yes, it did.

"You're really _not_ a casual drinker, are you?"

My face blanched only to burn from embarrassment. "What gave it away?"

Our movie wasn't up to snuff for Axel, and that was how we landed on the Exorcism. I'd never seen someone brighten at the idea of another person having not seen a 'real classic,' but Axel nearly broke his fingers searching for the director's cut buried in a box of DVDs beside his entertainment center. While he dug with pawing hands, I noted the stack of gold foil condoms on a shoebox and parted my lips with a thoughtful stare.

"If you pretend you've never been on the internet, then this movie is terrifying."

Sitting up some made me feel less awkward. "People fainted while watching it, right?"

Axel lifted the DVD up as if he'd found a relic. "Think about it this way. Before this movie, the scariest thing on screen was the Tingler, okay? That and maybe a Romero movie. Nothing even built up to this."

"Have we found a _passion_ of yours?"

"More like an expose of my free time."

After he'd pushed the DVD into the player and made it past the menu screen, Axel disappeared with a strangely attractive jog and reappeared holding a baggy of something green. Still sprawled out on his bed, I watched him pack a glass bowl he'd tugged out of his top dresser drawer, and he playfully pushed my knees around as if trying to shove me off his bed. We still weren't talking all that much as he set us up, and it was all on me. Talking wasn't my strong point even if he was making me laugh on and off and inviting a conversation. He didn't seem to mind me being quiet, though.

"First hit's yours." He grinned because of some dialogue from the movie but said nothing about it as I took the bowl and pulled off that first creamy hit that melted along my lungs like those multi-colored mint chocolates.

"I think my friends are going to be here tonight."

"The kid who raps?" Axel inhaled, held the smoke with an arched eyebrow and then a sleepy stream whistled free from his lips and right into my face. "I like him. Does he know you're... Whatever..."

That took a second. " _Oh-_ -yeah, no. Never."

"Why not?" He passed and I wasn't interested in getting too into the topic. It made it sound as if I couldn't trust my friends, which wasn't further from the truth. "Small town got you bogged down?"

"Who I like is no one's business. I'm not even sure how _I_ feel about myself, so I don't think on gender or sexuality enough to let myself be bothered by it. Sometimes I wish I could live without both. Perpetually fluid and undefined, but then I know I'd only get away with it because I'm like - Aryan Race Supreme, so there's that guilt."

"Isn't white ignorance bliss?" He reached out for my head only to stop as if distracted by his thoughts. "You being beautiful aside-you be what you gotta be, Roxas. I'm not gonna think twice about someone's identifiers. I _have_ thought about mine enough to kind of roll with the waves of whatever people are, because at the end of the day, what people want out of life isn't really fucking with my setup. Plus, it makes you a much more likable person if you educate yourself enough to eventually be void of caring about how someone else needs to live their life."

I reached up for his elevated hand. "How thoughtful of you."

He thoughtlessly laced his fingers with mine. More because they were there for the taking. "But it's nice knowing someone who knows but doesn't care, right?"

"I haven't experienced enough perks to give you an answer."

Axel exhaled and reached for his beer. "Fair enough."

Only when my fingers felt as if they were going to be warped through a black hole of anti-enlightenment did we put the bowl away and soak in the background noises of Regan MacNeil vomiting pea soup onto a priest. The themes for that day had been sacrilegious, but the strange didn't stop there. After a spell of us dully staring at the television from the side, a mildly faded Axel reached for the back of my cowlick graveyard for a head and pulled me close to kiss me open mouthed with the bedroom door wide open. Someone could've walked by, which could've been embarrassing considering priests were screaming, I was awkwardly attempting to balance my beer away from us just in case it spilt, and when our lips made wet noises the both of us had to pull away for a second and stop to laugh until on the brink of crying because, "Humans are so fucking gross. Why does this even feel good? Roxas, that's a tongue. You're putting _your_ tongue against _my_ tongue, which is inside of _my_ mouth."

I didn't care, though.

I'd decided I wasn't going to be there forever, so what I did didn't seem to matter half as much anymore.


End file.
